A conventional prime factor discrete Fourier transform (DFT) algorithm of the Winograd type is used to realize a discrete Fourier-like transform on the finite field GF(q/sup /n). A pipeline structure is used to implement this prime-factor DFT over GF(q/sup /n). This algorithm is developed to compute cyclic convolutions of complex numbers and to aid in decoding the Reed-Solomon codes. Such a pip